Turritella jasper bracelet

Welcome to my new blog! I do a variety of crafts, mostly fiber related, and have tried before to have a blog where I kept track of what I've done. I've recently gotten into jewelry making and find myself with a little more time to craft so I thought I'd try for a craft blog again. Here's my most recent project. I found the idea in this book that I found at JoAnn Fabrics.

This book really nails the style of jewelry I find myself drawn to. I've made something similar to the bracelet on the lower left and will have to post about it later. I've now made a second bracelet based on one in the book. Since it's my most recent project, I'll write about that first. The original bracelet had similar spirals of wire, but instead of a bead in the middle, they wrapped the two pieces together with bead laden wire. I liked the spirals, but wasn't fond of the beads. I bought these turritella jasper (agate) which contain fossils in it at a local store. I didn't have a plan for the beads when I bought them. I just really loved how they look. You'll find that I'm really a fan of stones in my jewelry as opposed to glass beads. I thought I could substitute these beads for the wire wrapped section shown in the book. The beads have two holes through them. I put one spiral through each hole. It mostly worked. The beads ended up further apart than I had visualized.

The first problem I ran into was getting the spirals even. I suspect that will be something that comes with practice. The second is that the spirals kept wanting to turn in the beads. I added small jump rings between adjacent spirals. That seemed to make them better while not taking away from the design. They still turned a bit, but I don't think that would be a problem The original bracelet had rather largeish jump rings between the design units so that's what I tried first, but they kind of took over and they stuck out horribly when I put the bracelet on my wrist, so I tried smaller ones. I also curved the spirals that run through the beads a bit to fit around my wrist better and it definitely helped.

Here's a close up of the jump ring arrangement:

After that, I wasn't sure how to add a clasp. With this number of bead units, I didn't have all that much room to spare, so I just added small jump rings to the end spirals and added a larger jump ring on one end and made a hook on the other. I think it turned out to be a very good length.

I have more of these beads. I will try something a little different the next time. I'd like to try again with the spirals, but it still needs to have space in the spirals for the jump rings, so I'm not sure it would work.